An educational day, and an expensive one. An all-out push on shares needed.

Welp, as of this moment, just as I've had a chance to sit down to post, it appears that YouCaring's widget is down. Which is an improvement from yesterday, when the entire platform was down for most of the day.

[Update: Nope. It's the whole platform again.]

No new photos for posting tonight. The crew had a short day today: José had personal business to take care of, Buffy had to take his daughter to Urgent Care, there was only so much Toney could do by himself, and we were gone from mid-morning onward. The one thing that did get done was pick-up of the rolling scaffolds for the upper-level prep and plaster work, and the guys will be back hard at it tomorrow, trying to get the whole upper level papered and wired.

We've been out all day, taking care of far-flung errands related to construction of the house and to Wings's work. It's been a very, very long day. A good one, an educational one, but an expensive one. Among other things, we've learned that the local option for glass, the hideously expensive? That's actually a FAR less expensive route than going with one of the supposedly-cheaper big-box corporate superstores.

Which means that all we can do is bite the bullet. It's a hell of an expensive bullet. But we now know why: There are two kinds of tempering for the glass (well, there are actually probably many more kinds than just two, but for purposes relevant to us, there are two). One is the sort of extra tempering that will be required, for example, for the windows closest to the woodstove, for obvious reasons. But around here, we can't use the sort of windows that could be, say, mass-ordered straight off a Lowes or Home Depot Web site. Why? Because they're manufactured for their primary market, which is, for most of the country, at a much lower elevation (4,000 feet or less). We're nearly double that maximum here. And between the altitude and temperature and weather extremes that we get, the windows have to be manufactured specifically for high-altitude usage, which involves a special process (and a particular glass composition). Oh, sure, we could by the low-end ones — and then have to replace them four years out, or much sooner if next year happens to be one of those with 98-degree summers and winter nights nearing 40 below. As with everything else, we'd rather take a little longer on the building process and do it right the first time. So, special order with the local guy it is (and his prices are so much better than the big-box stores, for the exact same products, that there's no question at this point).

So it's not as though anything has changed for the better on the money front, other than that we now know how much worse it could be. But we've got a lot yet to raise. That means that we need daily shares of our YouCaring page via the widgets provided, especially via the widget code at lower right that produces the running tally shown above. If I get a chance to catch my breath this week, I'll switch out the main photo to a more current one. But we really do need shares, through every possible mechanism.

We also need daily shares of Wings's site. This is what pays the bills, and it also funds the construction to a degree that would probably surprise you. This is our busy season, the one whose sales we depend on to get us through the winter. This year, those sales are being put toward getting us into a real home again for the first time in six years (and seven winters). Testimonials are helpful, whether sent to me for publication on our Web site or included when you share the link. And folks who want to commission holiday gifts should contact me now, because Wings needs sufficient creative time to devote to each project.

Many thanks to everyone who has given us a hand to this point. We're profoundly grateful. The coming weeks are going to take the process to a new level, both in terms of cost and in terms of the amount of time required of us, and that's fitting all these new and still-confusing things into what is already our busiest season of the year. We will be running, pretty much nonstop, between now and the end of the year. Please help us get through this incredibly complex, difficult, costly multi-stage point in the construction by sharing the links — and please bear with me as try not to fall too much farther behind in everything. At the moment, Wings and I are just happy to be home again, inside with the dogs and with the heat on, and feeling incredibly blessed that we have each other.

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